I LOVE CHANT - AND GREATLY DISLIKE THE ICEL CHANT MASS, and Why
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Hello everyone!
The associate pastor and I met yesterday and one of our topics was in what Mass we'd be learning as of September 17th. A good question, indeed!
Our diocese is supporting, however NOT mandating the ICEL chant Mass found in the Missal, etc... I am happy for it because I do not like it.
Please note that I LOVE chant and sacred Polyphony. I grew up doing sacred motets and solid, God-centered Anthems. This chant is, to me, poorly, poorly done. Some points:
1.) There are several cases of badly stressed inflections. "to people of good will", "full of your glory", "who comes in the name of the Lord" "Lamb of God" (as it is written without a hold over the first note of 'God'), and "have mercy on us" (it is written out as A GA B G AG - should GA B G A...G G)
2.) This Mass is really the 'Cum Jubilo' Mass, pushed by Pope Paul VI, but in reality is the Gregorian Chant Mass Funerals. Can we not assume that it is best that Masses should be sung for the purpose they were written for?
3.) Most Catholics (at least those I know) have at least the Kyrie, Sanctus and Agnus Dei down in the original Greek and Latin. To learn this in English is a step-backward.
4.) I spend a great amount of time telling people that chant does not equal boring or slow, but I can not look them straight in the eye and say that this Mass, especially its 'Gloria' is not boring. And then to say that we will be singing this Mass for several weeks, maybe even months in a row... I don't know if this was an original tune in the Kyriale, but even it was, it was written for a set occasion, not to be hammered out in Ordinary Time for weeks and months on end...
In my mind, this is ICEL presenting chant, and presenting it very badly, in its most boring and uninspired way possible. I feel like we can and will do better, especially if we're trying to re-introduce our old friend 'Chant' to the world through our Masses.
I think we're going to go with Jeff Ostrowski's 'Mass in Honor of St. Ralph Sherwin'. It is a step, as it is in English, and actually has a melody. We will learn the ICEL 'Mystery of Faith' and go with the three-note Amen.
Any thoughts??? -
Good points, and I think deep down, many of those who are pushing the ICEL chants really feel the same way. I will admit, I am advocating the ICEL chants too, because they are the "default" setting for the Missal, and I think everyone should at least know them well enough to sing them at a diocesan liturgy. But, I'm also thinking, how boring would it be to use the ICEL chants at a large communal celebration where there would be organ, brass, big choir, etc... well, so much for that!
Anyway, I have selected Mass in Honor of Saint Sherwin for my parish, with the pastor's support. It is by far the best chant setting (freely) available today. Beautifully written to fit the text, lyrical, reverent, and with a lasting quality that other settings don't have. There is nothing monotonous about it, I think people will enjoy singing it over and over again for years to come. I've tested it with my choir and cantors, and it's their first pick as well.
HOWEVER, my only concern (not really a complaint) is how Memorial Acclamation A begins identically to the ICEL chant acclamation A... This could present a problem, at first, in a parish where both the ICEL and Sherwin settings are used. I know it's trivial, but just a thought... And by the way, what would it take for Jeff to write acclamations B and C??? With so many supports of this Mass, I think it would be wise to at least make acclamations available for those interested... It's a fine setting, and I look forward to using it in the fall. Peace. -
Nothing wrong with doing something else, and if you are already doing Greek/Latin, it is pointless to revert. And doing something more impressive in English is a great idea too. It doesn't sound like the Missal chants are for you.
However (and everyone please please please think about this): your parish is NOT the norm. The norm is what you hear if you drive an hour and go to the random Sunday Mass at the random parish. This is where you will find what the Missal chants are designed to repair. And for this purpose the Missal chants are a godsend - I truly mean that.
To understand the point, you MUST think outside of you own parish and your own choir and your own situation. You must think more broadly. Think big. Think about the whole Church!
To your specifics:
1) The English is awkward in "people of good will" and there is no easy way to deal with it. The Missal chants chose to preserve the Latin formula, even when some other formula might sound better in English. I think that is the right choice, since the Missal chants are NOT intended as an end in themselves; their purpose is to point the way to the normative music of the universal Roman Rite. Let me also say that if you had had your way, there would be someone else posting here to say that you got it all wrong. There is no one answer to the problem of English. That's not a bad thing: again, the point of the English is to point to the Latin.
2) I share the view that what is called "the death Mass" should not be the norm; however, it is indisputable that this is the easiest setting and that people take to it quickly. If you want to move on, great. The point is to establish a beginning. Again, think big.
3) Individual Catholics may know the Kyrie, Sanctus, Agnus, but parish cultures do not. At the best parishes, these chants are pulled out in Lent, which sends exactly the message you want to avoid. If the Missal chants are used year round, that is a step forward. Remember too that the point is to establish a baseline that is not Mass of Creation.
4) Gloria XV is not boring, and it really does hold up over years of use. I can testify to that from personal experience. What we have here is the musician bias: musicians think simple is dull but people in the pews don't agree.
All that said, let me say again that the Missal chants are NOT for parishes that are currently using chant. They are for the 90% of everyone else and for them the Missal chants are the best thing to happen to Catholic music in many decades.
Do you realize that until these Missal chants came out, we had nothing normative except for Latin that we could even use to teach people? It's true that the old Sacramentary had English chant too, but it was riddled with typos, stuck in the back, unknown and unemphasized, buried and forgotten. It didn't exist for all practical purpose. Now, at long last, we have something to serve as the basis of future progress. -
JIF,
(I wrote this before seeing anyone else's comments, so I apologize if I repeat anything from anyone else!)
I would have to disagree. I think a slavishly equalist interpretation of the ICEL notation would cause the problems you mention, but not one that's guided by the text. First off, of course no chant melody created for the Latin can be perfectly adapted to a language with completely different rhythmic characteristics. But learning the melodies in English -- especially now that the English lines up much better than the Latin -- is a step toward a fully Latin ordinary. We are introducing the new Gloria next week (our bishop is permitting early implementation), and next summer we will be switching to the corresponding Latin Gloria XV at one Mass. Regarding your specific points:
1) Whether in Latin or English, there's always a tension between musical and linguistic rhythms. I'm not privy to the particular decisions ICEL made regarding chant, but I'm guessing that avoiding the use of editorial rhythmic symbols encourages us to use the text as a guide -- because if you put an open note somewhere, a lot of people are going to interpret it as though a closed note is exactly one beat and an open note is exactly two. All of the places you highlight work as long as you make the text king. (We are so accustomed to learning melodies and then fitting the words in later!) So just because there aren't moras or episemas over "God" in the Agnus doesn't mean you can't sing it that way. The ICEL sheet music merely has notes and bar lines -- making it musical is up to us.
2) I think you mean "Jubilate Deo"? The designations for various Masses are merely suggestions introduced in the past few centuries, and don't necessarily reflect medieval or ancient usage. Also, even the grouping of certain parts together into one Mass setting was editorial, if I remember correctly. So we really don't know if certain Masses were written for certain occasions (except perhaps in the case of troped Kyries or "farced" Glorias, but that, I believe, only applies to those individual movements). Would it be great to be able to do all the Masses as they are designated in the Liber/GR? Yes, but those designations shouldn't (I believe) be considered to have the force of law.
3) Maybe "most" throughout the world, but not in the US. The Kyrie and Agnus, yes, but not the Sanctus. At my current parish (I have been here a little over a year), I tried doing the Sanctus XVIII and Agnus XVIII last Advent, and got blank stares on the former, while the latter was sung by all with gusto. Of course eventually they will all learn that Sanctus, but not before learning it in English. So, at least for us, it's a step forward.
4) I vehemently disagree about the Gloria. When it is sung with the proper inflection and phrasing, it is (in my opinion) quite beautiful. When I introduced it to my choirs recently, they all loved it (to my surprise). They loved its simple beauty, the shape of the phrases (I explained how each phrase follows a similar formula), the way toward the end it naturally builds to the name of Jesus (especially with the repeated "You alone," most effective when done antiphonally). And again, it wasn't necessarily written for a specific day or season. I believe some scholars consider this Gloria to be a particularly ancient congregational Gloria (ditto with the Sanctus XVIII and Agnus XVIII).
I won't sign on to everything as if it's perfect (e.g., I think "Baptism" in the Credo should be three syllables!), but, at least to me, these chants are welcome and refreshing, with one condition: the text must always guide the music, and not the other way around. If it's not perfect, perhaps it's because nothing in translation can be perfect, and ultimately we all need to be singing the Ordinary in Latin (as we ought to be able to do, if we take PVI's Jubilate Deo seriously).
Jon -
JIF, there's so much agenda within your concerns, and I don't mean that as your personal agenda or taste. There's a whole lotta shakin' goin' on.
And ditto, I started this an hour ago, and got interrupted, so pardon any redundancies.
since you've asked:
*Right on all counts regarding a restatement of "Cum jubilo...Jubilate Deo...Death Mass...etc."
*Not incorrect that many have questioned (Fr. Ruff) the compilers' sylLAbic empHAsis as satisfactory though, to each, untenable.
*Perhaps Gloria XI isn't everyone's cup of tea as a paragon of artistic beauty.
But all that given-
*It cannot be ignored that to dismiss it out of hand would be a grave mistake and injustice to the Church and church. Like it or not, it will be the singular setting common to all eleven conferences and every parish that has an approved hymnal or worship aide book. To not fold it into each parish's practice would be eliminating the one setting that both adheres to the CMAA paradigmatic ethos and to literally enabling a real unity among English singing Catholics at both the parish and larger Mass events. We've blown this already once with "the Death Mass," let's not repeat the same mistake.
*One cannot account for how each bishop or pastor will deem which setting(s) is/are appropriate locally. Some have great musical acumen and/or advisors, others will always be a day late and a penny short of a dollar. There's nothing intrinsically "wrong" with the term mandate, but a wise "shot-caller" will feather-in the ICEL alongside the Ralph Sherwin or the Bancks or the.....argghh.....Misa Luna (how come no one's mentioned the irony of the title of that setting?) I digress.
*The issue of worthiness of a piece of music seems to always drift, in conversation, to how it appears off the page.
Again, the wise practicioner can craft a lesser work off the page into a beautiful expression through effective performance pedagogy (with the sole exception of a number of moldy oldy Carey Landry ditties, sorry Carey!) So, if you're not Scott Turkington, Jenny Donelson, MaryAnn Carr or David Hughes, and ICEL's not flowing like a river in Vermont, work harder on the precision and phraseology of your chanters. Try using a decent organ accompaniment arrangement; better yet, write one yourself so you can believe in the accompaniment as being complimentary and enhancive to the chant.
The ICEL isn't merely "Gebrauchsmusick," it is what it is: a gateway to a chanting church.
YMMV -
Have you considered Fr Columba Kelly's English adaptations of the Gregorian masses for the new translation.
Mass XII, Pater Cuncta, is especially good - we will be using it for our fall chant course which concludes with vigil mass of Christ the King.
They are quite nice and can be downloaded at Sacred Music Project, or, if you contact him at St Meinrad's, he will send you the complete chant.
Most of the comments here, whether pro or con, are correct.
Many of us have surely learned that the solution to what may be an inept musical setting or portion is to apply a great amount of artistry and be very nice to it. -
Hello all,
Ok, ok...lol. I think I ticked a few people off. I'm sorry to have done it. I definitely didn't mean to. I was just sharing my opinion: namely, that this chant is not an adequate 'poster boy' for chant, especially when we have to fight to bring chant to the forefront of people's minds.
My parish is actually an interesting case study. We are a mostly blue-collar parish that has, for years, been full-fledged 'OCP-ites'. When I questioned the woman who was leading the music program before me as a fill-in; the former director had passed away, she said, well, at least we'll be doing the Latin Mass this Advent and won't have to worry about the translation. When pressed, she said that they had always done the Latin Mass (the current one in question but in Latin) every Advent and Lent for the last several years.
To Jeffrey's point - that is a TERRIBLE practice to get into. It makes Latin and chant out to be a penance until the real joy of either Christmas or Easter comes, complete with lilting 6/8 rhythms and congo drums.
But to do this Mass for an extended period during Ordinary Time is unthinkable for me. I do agree that it has a universal quality, and, come some time after Christmas, we will do it at my parish to get the people used to it in preparation for the Bishop's arrival for Confirmations. But I don't think it's suitable to start with, even if your parish is new to chant. To me it leaves a bad taste in the mouth and makes the singing of chant seem like a chore.
I have a real problem equating "Ho-ly-ee, Ho-ly-ee" with "San-ctoo-oos, San-ctoo-oos." I'm not privy to the criticism this ICEL rendition has received, so if I've re-opened an already previously exposed wound, I'm sorry. But I know almost any and all of you on this board could do better arranging one of the Latin chant Masses than has been done here. And I now that many of you, particuarly Jeffrey Ostrwoski or Adam Bartlett, etc... could write a new chant Mass that was stressed properly, had a more beautiful melody with-in the connection of the words and actually made chant something beautiful.
I would agree that the Gloria is beautiful, but when in Latin and when sung for the purpose it has been used for and when not repeated ad-nauseum. To re-invent this one into it's current is to me equatable with Mr. Haugen's continually off-stressed Mass of Creation 'Holy, Holy'. Almost every 2-syllable word was stressed wrongly, including the 'Holy', 'power', 'glory', 'highest', etc...
I'm with you guys...chant, chant, chant. But when it is not done well, it is not a 'member' of the Kyriale and only serves to wear down chant's sacred reputation.
No offense... :) -
Oh JIF, you didn't make anyone mad. It is fun to discuss these things. You just set up a great challenge, that's all. All great.
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The adaptation of the simplest melodies raises a relatively major question for me: How do we then get the English-only parish to take up Latin chant? We can no longer rely on the familiarity of Mass XVIII and the simplicity of Gloria XV to get us over the initial objections. We now have to introduce chants which are unfamiliar and non-repetitive. That will be a real hardship - plus getting over the objection of "...but we JUST changed everything!"
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Hmmm, interesting. We shall see!
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Am curious… what was this? Were they original melodies, or adaptations of Latin chant? Again, just curious. And were they any good? I don't know if I ever heard them.Do you realize that until these Missal chants came out, we had nothing normative except for Latin that we could even use to teach people? It's true that the old Sacramentary had English chant too, but it was riddled with typos, stuck in the back, unknown and unemphasized, buried and forgotten. It didn't exist for all practical purpose. Now, at long last, we have something to serve as the basis of future progress. -
Just a few melodic adjustments to these chants would be a great help. a flex or an oriscus to give a little melodic support to and around the accent might be enough.
The mora vocis and spoken rhythms will form these ordinaries into something more beautiful than they may first appear. I even hear the Latin ordinaries sung without the mora,- the final note sustained with a Broadway belt. That's not chant.
Someone from ICEL is reported to have said that the M3 melodies bear the same "errors" that appear in the Latin chants. -
Can anyone tell me, (I don't have all of my books around me) which Gloria in the Kyriale this ICEL Gloria is based on? I should know this but I don't. (I think of my brother, with whom I can sing the first two or three pitches of any given Mass setting in the Kyriale and he can immediately identify the Mass setting and number...I'm envious!)
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JIF It's Gloria XV.
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The ICEL gloria is based on Gloria XV
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We began pre-Mass rehearsals in August and start the ICEL chants on Sunday at all Masses, September 4 ... the pre-Mass rehearsals went very well and the people are singing them with gusto and have welcomed them! We said, "farewell" to the Mass of Creation a year ago and incorporated Latin Ordinaries at the principal Mass and a composite Mass to bridge until now at all other Masses. We are surprised and pleased at how open and welcoming the people have been with the ICEL chants. In a year we will look at other Masses (maybe sooner, first of the year). Our youth, after having returned from Spain (WYD), are very excited to start a schola of their own to take on Latin and the SEP and other Propers, and a choir for polyphony. Very exciting things are happening and coming together at a wonderful and positive time ... I am very thankful for the ICEL chants and looking forward to a future of great Catholic music. We are working on getting the "amen" out of the molasses, other than that, wow, how exciting!
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Mark M, yes the chants in the current Sacramentary are fine. We use them in our parish - with some small changes. The Sanctus and Agnus are part of this sheet of a simple English Mass. We've used this for years. Scott Turkington told me that our parish is the only one in the English speaking world he has ever known that uses these Sacramentary chants. You have to dig to find them.
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Wow… I didn't know that those chants were in the Sacramentary! I always thought that that "tonemass" was written by Arlene (but with Kyrie XVI and with the Gloria by Kurt Poterack as seen in the Adoremus hymnal).
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That's right about the Gloria. There are a few changed notes. Very small. Mostly they are pretty good. If people have known about them, it would have saved lots of pain and suffering over the years.
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Can someone update the Sacramentary Tone Mass to the Missal Tone Mass?
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I think Jeffrey Tucker is 100% right on with the points in his first comment.
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The ICEL Gloria can be exciting if sung antiphonally: Cantor or schola vs. congregation. We sing it antiphonally until the "petitions" in the middle: Schola: You take away the sins of the world ALL: have mercy on us.
When we reach "For you alone are the Holy One.." everyone sings to the end.
I think that the build up to the text "you alone are the Most High, Jesus Christ" is great drama! This Gloria sounds BEST when sung without accompaniment.
As for the ICEL "Holy" and "Lamb of God", I agree with the OP.
Oh, Ted Marier, where art thou when we need you? The original chants being written by Jeff O, Fr Kelly etc... are on the right track. We are still singing the David Hurd "Holy" (New Plainchant Mass) with a slight change to the opening phrases to accommodate the new text. Also, we sing his "Lamb of God". When he wrote this mass, years ago, he his eye on the famous setting by Merbecke. -
I must say that I'm FAR happer with the Missal chants than I thought I would be. IN liturgy, they really work extremely well.
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Joseph Michael, I like the way you described the way you do the Gloria antiphonally. How did you teach the congregation to do it that way? Our choir is not visible to the congregation.
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In response to dthaifley:
Back in September-October, we began singing the new text. Music is printed on special cards in the pews. Before each mass, I, or another organist, had a practice session with the congregation about 5-6 minutes before mass. (This is something that we almost NEVER do.)
Probably, we had time to sing it twice through before mass. I explained that the "Glory" is really in three parts: praise, petition, affirmation. So, the way we sing changes with each section (as described in a post above.) It seemed to make sense with the people in the pews. Our cantor and/or schola is up in the loft in the back of the church. The congregation is used to singing with leadership "from on high". It worked perfectly the first time. The second Sunday, we had another short pre-Mass rehearsal. And that seemed to do it. For the congregation phrases, I play on the Great with a stronger, but not overly powerful, registration. Even though this is based on Gloria XV, I'm sure that few, if any, were familiar with this melody. In the past, if we did sing a Latin chant, it would have been from Mass VIII.
I also mentioned that this chant melody is well over a thousand years old. And, some scholars believe that the basic melody was sung by Jews at the time of Christ. "Imagine, we are singing a melody that Christ and Apostles may have known and sung."
Lastly, I reminded the congregation that "Chant is durable. You can't break it. So, jump in and sing." -
Rythmn of text, rythmn of the neumes, mora vocis.
and faster.
What needs to be added to these chants is your skill. -
"Chant is durable. You can't break it. So, jump in and sing."
+1 -
For what it's worth...
We have our Bishop coming tonight for Confirmations and were required to rehearse the Missal Gloria I began complaining about in this post. I have to say that after giving it a more musical rendering, I take back some of the nastier things I said about it; it actually has some redeeming points and can be quite nice. I have a very talented group of 5th and 6th graders singing it and they are doing a very nice job - definitely one of the most talented groups of young people I have ever worked with.
So, forgive me MISSAL GLORIA, you're not so bad after all. -
Dear friends of chant,
Jeffrey Tucker said pretty much everything I'd want to say in his first post above. I have two small notes to make, and a suggestion.
Why the "funeral Mass" chants as basis of English chant? Those are the Latin chants in the Order of Mass of the Latin Missal.
If anyone at ICEL ever said that the English chants bear the same "errors" as the Latin chants, personally I never heard it. It doesn't sound to me like something that would be said by anyone involved in the project. But I could be mistaken, if in some context unknown to me someone was making a particular kind of point, eg ironic or something.
My suggestion is to purchase from Liturgical Press (this is shameless advertising since I'm a "shareholder" as a monk) "Chants of the Roman Missal," and to check out the review of this book by John Ainslie, now a featured post at Pray Tell. The goal of the book was not just to defend the ICEL melodies, but more to show how they came about, and the difficulties involved and the inevitable compromises, so as to help others think about the issue for themselves, and to stimulate a helpful discussion for the next round of revisions. Some experts criticize the melodies because they want greater faithfulness to Latin melodies, others like Ainslie want greater freedoms for the sake of the English text. I welcome a wide variety of reactions, and I think it's best that I let the discussion run for some time without jumping in myself.
Pax,
Fr. Anthony Ruff, OSB
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If one has to use organ accompaniments, these are far away the best sets:
Vatican II Set / Leeds Diocese / organ accompaniment to ICEL Gloria
The official ICEL accompaniments and those of Liturgical Press are a 'hot mess' in my view. -
N.B. Although the new ICEL Sanctus and Agnus Dei are more familiar to us from the Requiem Mass, they are actually from Missa XVIII, the Mass traditionally associated with weekdays during Advent and Lent. Granted, that's not much better than being from the Requiem Mass and now moved to every Sunday. But you don't NEED to think of them as specifically Requiem!
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Not all new missals contain the chant settings in english.
Which is the best missal to look for them?
I was expecting a full kyriale, the missal i saw only had one kyrie and one gloria..which is ridiculous.
(or could it be that they were there but I missed them in it? There was no index) -
Fr. Ruff, any way to read the accompanying essays without having to invest in the full, hardbound musical notation?
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